Move involving companies such as Google, Facebook and X comes after evidence of Russian online interference in polls
The EU is calling on eight major tech companies including Google, Facebook and X to detail how they identify and tackle deepfake material amid concerns about the use of the technology to influence elections.
In a world first, they will be using new laws on artificial intelligence to force companies to root out fake video, imagery and audio.
Continue reading...News media bargaining code could apply to tech companies using massive amounts of online information for generative AI, researchers say
Australian media companies could seek compensation from Meta for its use of online news sources in training generative AI technology, researchers have said.
When Meta announced last week that it would not sign new deals to pay for news in Australia for use on Facebook, it downplayed the value of news to its services, stating that just 3% of Facebook usage in Australia was related to news.
Continue reading...Publishers informed on Friday Meta would not enter new deals when current contracts expire and Facebook news tab would shut down in April
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has set itself on a collision course with the Albanese government after announcing it will stop paying Australian publishers for news, and plans to shut down its news tab in Australia and the United States.
Meta informed publishers on Friday that it would not enter new deals when the current contracts expire this year.
Continue reading...Midjourney’s CEO David Holz says company close to ‘hammering’ images of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and others ‘for next 12 months’
The groundbreaking artificial intelligence image-generating company Midjourney is considering banning people from using its software to make political images of Joe Biden and Donald Trump as part of an effort to avoid being used to distract from or misinform about the 2024 US presidential election.
“I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform,” Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, said last week, adding that the company is close to “hammering” – or banning – political images, including those of the leading presidential candidates, “for the next 12 months”.
Continue reading...Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supported Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which Meta said violated its policies
Meta has removed Instagram and Facebook accounts run on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following criticism over his support for Hamas after the group’s 7 October attack on Israel that sparked the months-long war still raging in the Gaza Strip, the company confirmed on Friday.
Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, offered no specifics about its reasoning. However, it said it removed the accounts “for repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy”.
Continue reading...Facebook’s parent company to pay out to shareholders as it reports $40bn revenues for final quarter
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is expected to receive $700m (£549m) a year in dividends.
On Thursday, Meta announced it would pay its first-ever quarterly dividend to investors since Facebook floated on the stock market in 2012, after beating Wall Street expectations with $40bn in revenues for the final quarter last year.
Continue reading...Many parents held up images of the children who died after falling prey to abusers on apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat
Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the parents of children who killed themselves after being subjected to online sexual exploitation during a US Senate hearing Wednesday. Evan Spiegel offered condolences to parents whose children obtained deadly illegal drugs via Snapchat. The words were too little, too late for their intended audience, though. The grieving guardians expressed only frustration with the social media CEOs’ responses to their plight and to questions from members of Congress.
“I’m not happy with the answers the CEOs are giving. They can’t give a straight answer. Not even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Tammy Rodriguez, the mother of Selena Rodriguez, who was 11 when she died by suicide three years ago after being solicited for sexually exploitative content by strangers on Instagram and Snapchat.
Continue reading...Even as more job cuts await, some analysts see the beginnings of a bull market in the coming season of earnings reports
Will 2024 be a boom or a bust for big tech? By one estimate, there have been more than 7,500 layoffs in the sector since the start of the year – a dispersal of pink slips that many hoped would have ceased after the deep job cuts of 2023.
However, as the US’s big tech earnings season gets under way this week, some analysts are predicting strong numbers. This batch of quarterly financial results may show that the industry has cleared out its pandemic-era overhiring and reorganised itself around cloud computing and AI - necessitating cuts in sectors with less rosy prospects. Analysts keen on AI say we are at the start of a tech bull market.
Continue reading...Former chief operating officer was lead architect of Facebook’s digital advertising-driven business model
Sheryl Sandberg is to step down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, nearly two years after quitting her executive role at the business.
Sandberg was the lead architect of Facebook’s digital advertising-driven business model as Meta’s chief operating officer.
Continue reading...Critics call cattle-raising project on Hawaii ranch ‘a billionaire’s strange sideshow’ and bad for the environment
The social media tycoon Mark Zuckerberg’s latest business venture raising “world-class” beef cattle on his sprawling luxury Hawaiian hideaway has been derided as out of touch and environmentally irresponsible.
The Meta billionaire posted a picture of himself on Wednesday eating a steak – medium rare, no sides – from his Ko’olau ranch, a 1,400-acre compound on Kauai, Hawaii’s oldest island.
Continue reading...Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine
Meta has engaged in a “systemic and global” censorship of pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In a scathing 51-page report, the organization documented and reviewed more than a thousand reported instances of Meta removing content and suspending or permanently banning accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The company exhibited “six key patterns of undue censorship” of content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, including the taking down of posts, stories and comments; disabling accounts; restricting users’ ability to interact with others’ posts; and “shadow banning”, where the visibility and reach of a person’s material is significantly reduced, according to HRW.
Continue reading...New legislation will help ensure sustainability of public interest journalism, Labor says
Tech giants could be forced to hand over sensitive details on how they distribute news on their platforms to Australia’s competition watchdog as part of the federal government’s commitment to levelling the playing field for public interest journalism in the digital age.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will undertake periodic reporting into how platforms subject to the media bargaining code are distributing news content on sites and whether significant bargaining power imbalances between the tech giants and media organisations exist.
Continue reading...Reports suggest a ban is among potential options to protect young people from online harm
Rishi Sunak is considering limiting social media access for teenagers under the age of 16 to try to protect them from online harm, with reports suggesting a potential ban is on the cards.
The government is considering further action despite bringing in the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to shield children from harmful content or face fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.
Continue reading...Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing
Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.
Continue reading...Joan Donovan says funding was cut off for criticizing Meta when university was receiving $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity
One of the world’s leading experts on misinformation says she was fired by Harvard University for criticising Meta at a time that the school was being pledged $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.
Joan Donovan says her funding was cut off, she could not hire assistants and she was made the target of a smear campaign by Harvard employees. In a legal filing with the US education department and the Massachusetts attorney general first published by the Washington Post, she said her right to free speech had been abrogated.
Continue reading...Instagram and Facebook parent company also knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, unsealed legal complaint says
Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.
The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew – but never disclosed – it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an “open secret” at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents.
Continue reading...Businessman warns people to ‘never ever’ purchase from advertisers on Facebook and Instagram after ‘totally fraudulent’ video appears
Australian businessman Dick Smith has urged people to stop buying anything from Facebook or Instagram after a deepfake video of him spruiking an investment opportunity was circulated by scammers online.
Smith posted a message on his personal website on Monday afternoon about the video, which was designed to appear like a segment on A Current Affair, featuring host Ally Langdon apparently interviewing him, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest.
Continue reading...Policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the WSJ
Meta is now allowing Facebook and Instagram to run political advertising saying the 2020 election was rigged.
The policy was reportedly introduced quietly in 2022 after the US midterm primary elections, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the decision. The previous policy prevented Republican candidates from running ads arguing during that campaign that the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Meta suspended RMIT FactLab from Facebook’s fact-checking program after no campaigners claimed it was biased
Facebook has agreed to reinstate RMIT FactLab to its factchecking program two months after it was suspended in the wake of repeated complaints by Sky News Australia about the key factchecker’s debunking of claims by the no campaign about the voice.
No voice campaigners – including Sky host Peta Credlin, Liberal senator James Paterson and the right-wing thinktank the IPA – claimed RMIT FactLab was biased and demanded Facebook remove it from its program which aims to tackle online misinformation.
Continue reading...Sites agree to stop practices that give them an unfair advantage over businesses and shoppers
The UK’s competition watchdog has said it has secured commitments from Amazon and the Facebook owner Meta to protect consumers on their marketplaces.
The agreements come after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched separate investigations into Amazon, which sells its own products and allows sellers to retail via its online marketplace function, and Meta, which owns Facebook Marketplace.
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